Until the BBC respects the UK's diverse communities, it will never be able to represent the country's diversity

Essay from anthology: "The BBC at 100: Will It Survive?" edited by John Mair.


“I want to be Head of BBC Diversity”

I was talking informally to a very senior executive of the corporation over a coffee in a restaurant just off Carnaby Street in London a few years ago.

The executive’s response was direct and to the point.

“Why on earth do you want to do that Marcus?”. The exec took a sip of their drink and explained their thinking by way of a compliment, “I see you as having a really bright future at the Beeb. You are one of the few Black people with news and current affairs experience at an executive producer level, you’ve overseen some really complicated investigations, and you’ve had to make some really tough Political calls in Scotland.”

Then came the killer punch.

“Head of Diversity will take you away from all of that - it will lead your career up a blind alley. It’s not where you want to be, if you want real power.”

I have no delusions of grandeur regarding my career in British broadcasting in general, and the BBC in particular, but I had heard his argument before and given it some thought.

I responded with what I felt at the time was a power move:

“I guess you and I see diversity slightly differently,” I replied. “Think of it this way; Kenny (I was referring to Ken MacQuarrie) is a major player on the BBC’s executive board as Director of BBC Scotland. He is effectively in charge of one of the most important parts of the BBC - and overseeing over a thousand members of staff and millions of pounds worth of programming budget.

“I don’t want to be Head of Diversity if it’s just as an extension of Human Resources, or Head of Diversity simply advising on how to get a few more Black people or women on screen, or even behind it. I want to be Head of Diversity at the BBC in the same way Kenny is head of Scotland - with real power.

“The BBC needs to restructure - it is not only vital for media diversity, it is essential for the corporation’s survival”.

My power move that day was unnecessary.


Restructuring the job…Widening the core.


Needless to say, I did not become Head of Diversity, and although the BBC did go on to raise both the profile and position of the Head of Diversity role it did not restructure in the way I believed was so vital.

That said, I still believe that restructuring is necessary. To understand why, we first have to understand the BBC’s current structure and charter.

The BBC’s Charter in 2007 states that one of the core purposes of the corporation is to represent “the UK, its nations, regions and communities”.

But this is not new. The BBC has always recognised the importance of representing the UK’s different Nations and the Regions. The 1952 Charter formalised the idea of National Broadcasting Councils and Regional Advisory Councils. These represented the interests and culture of Scotland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland and different geographic regions both in terms of output and in the running of the corporation.

The importance of the Nations and Regions is seen as so intrinsic to the structure of the BBC that Ken MacQuarrie (then Head of BBC Scotland who I spoke about earlier) who was later promoted to Head of Nations and Regions, described the role he left in 2020 as “one of the BBC's largest and most high profile divisions”.

Then, when Rhodri Talfan Davies took over from MacQuarrie in December 2020, the BBC Director General said Davies “brings considerable editorial and strategic experience [to the role]” (my italics). Note the word “editorial”.

This was precisely the quality that the senior BBC executive in the restaurant told me the BBC Head of Diversity lacked, and why they saw it as a “dead-end” for my career.


What’s missing from the job description?


Now if you hadn’t noticed it already, let me point out the glaring omission from Ken MacQuarrie and Rhodri Talfan Davies’ job titles. Despite the BBC Charter explicitly highlighting the importance of the UK’s “nations, regions and communities”, the job which is meant to be specifically in charge of ensuring this, only includes two out of these three areas: the nations and regions.

Despite it being written into the charter since 1952 there is (still) no one explicitly responsible in the BBC for the UK’s communities.

Many people working in the field of diversity and inclusion have previously seen reference to “communities” in the charter to implicitly refer to diversity.

In 2017, after campaigning and lobbying by Sir Lenny Henry, myself and others this implicit understanding was made explicit when the Charter was updated to include the principle of “diversity”, stating one of the corporation’s core public purposes is, “to reflect, represent and serve the diverse communities of all of the United Kingdom’s nations and regions” (my italics).

While the BBC Charter correctly identifies diverse communities on par with the nations and regions, the corporation seems to have consistently overlooked them. Diversity at the BBC is fundamentally framed as either an HR problem, or one of influencing the creativity of the corporation. People working in diversity have little or no editorial power, and importantly there is no diversity role on the BBC’s News board. Yet, no one would ever suggest taking this approach to how the BBC oversees the nations and regions.

This is a mistake.


Accept the reality of Britain in 2021.


The reality is that in 2021 the UK’s diverse communities are increasingly and possibly as important to British people’s identities than their nationality (English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish) or IN which geographical region they live.

While the BBC’s structure embedding the importance of the nations and regions, while overlooking communities, might have made sense 50 or even over 15 years ago, it looks increasingly arcane and out of touch with the needs of a modern public service broadcaster in the UK.

The fact is, Britain is a fundamentally different society to the one it was when the BBC was born, in a multitude of ways.

Let’s look at this chronologically.

In 1971 the UK census recorded ethnicity for the first time. That year, the White population made up roughly 97.7 percent of the population. According to the 2011 census the non-White population in the UK is 13 per cent, and the 2021 census is expected to show that it has grown even larger.

In 1980, homosexual acts in private between two men in private were finally de-criminalised in Scotland, despite the Sexual Offences Bill 1967 de-criminalising homosexual acts between two men in England and Wales.

It took until 1995 for the many of the rights we now take for granted of disabled people to be recognised in the UK under the Disability Discrimination Act.

Put simply, how Britain now formally recognises these different communities both in terms of law, and in general public discourse has undergone a rapid transformation over the last fifty years.

Yet, the BBC structures still places communities as an afterthought at best, and completely ignores them at worst.

The BBC has survived, and even thrived, over the last 100 years because it has recognised the importance of reflecting how society and its audience view themselves. Without an organisational structure that prioritises the UK’s diverse communities it is failing to do this.

This is not just my assertion. An Ofcom report in 2018 suggested that many communities in the UK are increasingly dissatisfied with the broadcaster and simply switching off. While another report, Mind the Viewing Gap, in 2015 by digital.i showed that non-White people made up only 6% of PSB viewing despite making up 14% of the population.

Reflecting on my conversation that day in the restaurant with the senior BBC executive I think I made just one mistake. I do not want to be head of BBC Diversity.

I want to be head of BBC Diverse Communities. And when the BBC creates the position - which I believe it will have to one day in order to survive - I hope I will be just about young enough to send in my CV.


This essay originally appears in the anthology: "The BBC at 100: Will It Survive?" edited by John Mair, and is available to order now.

IS THE BBC'S NEW DIVERSITY STRUCTURE WORKING? - Part 1 ethnic diversity

Just under two years ago the BBC radically restructured not only its diversity departments but how diversity reported into the overall structure of the organisation. 

The corporation appointed June Sarpong to the newly created post of Director of Creative Diversity on a part time basis, Anne Foster was appointed Head of Workforce Diversity, and four months after these appointments Miranda Wayland was made Head of Creative Diversity, reporting directly to Sarpong.

Possibly, most importantly, despite the Director of Creative Diversity being a part time role, within the management structure the position sat on the Executive Committee. The Executive Committee is the highest management board at the BBC, and it was the first time that diversity had a seat at the top table.

Yesterday the BBC published its annual report, with details on its diversity behind the camera and onscreen. And so the question has to be:

Is the new structure working?

First a disclaimer - so far I have only gone through the corporation’s ethnicity figures, and so this blog post will just examine progress (or lack thereof) in this area, I will do separate posts specifically looking at disability, socio-economic diversity, gender, and other forms of diversity in the next few days. Also I have primarily focused on "BAME", "Asian", and "Black" diversity as, for the most part, the figures for other types of ethnicities are not desegregated.  

PLUS ÇA CHANGE, PLUS C’EST LA MÊME CHOSE

First the big headline: Despite the major restructure there has effectively been no major changes - positive or negative. 

Between 2019/20 and 2020/21 the total number of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people working at the BBC increased from 15.7% to 15.9%. If you drill down into those overall numbers the proportion of the Asian workforce has stayed the same at 6.7% across both years and Black representation has marginally decreased from 3.5% to 3.4%. 

All the possible increases and decreases are within the margin of error, meaning that there has effectively been no change.

ETHNIC DIVERSITY IN DEPARTMENT MAKING PROGRAMMES GOES DOWN

It is of course important to remember that the reason why BBC’s diversity is combed over by so many (including politicians) is because it is a media organisation, and so while the overall number is important the figures that are most important are the diversity numbers of the people actually making the content and with editorial power.

Here, there are some worrying signs.

The department that makes the TV and radio programmes is a sub-division of BBC Studios. This sub-division saw Black Asian and minority ethnic representation fall from 11.1% in 2019/20 to 10% in 2020/21. The percentage of Black staff also fell by almost a fifth from 2.4%  to 2.0%, and the proportion of Asian staff also fell by almost a fifth from 3.4% to 2.8%.

Numbers going down is never a good sign, but in many ways it is the numbers from the Nations and Regions which might be even more worrying for the corporation.

These numbers have stayed relatively flat year-on-year: 5.9% for Black, Asian and ethnic minority representation in both years. And a slight decrease of 0.1 percentage points for both Asian representation (2.7% fell to 2.6%) and Black representation (1.2% to 1.1%).

The reason why these numbers are concerning is the fact that as the BBC continues to push more productions outside of London it is now very clear that the ethnicity numbers in no way reflect the parts of the country they are moving to. 

The BBC has shifted productions to Manchester with a non-White population of 33%, Cardiff has a non-White population of 15%, Glasgow has a non-White population of 11%, Bristol has a non-White population of 16% and Birmingham with a non-White population of 42%. 

Unless the corporation can find a way to turn around its out of London diversity figures there is an obvious fear that any increased regional push will see a decrease in ethnic diversity.

NEWS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS REPRESENTATION STAYS STATIC

News and current affairs deserves a special mention in any analysis in the BBC’s diversity figures, and especially when trying to judge the effectiveness of the BBC’s new structure.

BBC news has come under considerable criticism over the last two years for both its employment practices and its editorial decisions. Just before the new diversity structure was announced the BBC made a very public U-turn over its decision that Naga Munchetty had broken its impartiality rules when discussing her experience of racism in regards to a tweet by President Trump. In 2020 the BBC then made another U-turn after defending a reporter's use of the N-word being aired at breakfast time. It still stands by its decision to ban its journalists from attending Black Lives Matter protests or showing any public signs of support for #BLM (even as the England football team continues to take the knee on the pitch). And in a management restructure it effectively demoted its highest Black member of staff  (Kamal Ahmed) who then left the corporation a few months later.

The staff ethnic diversity numbers in news and current affairs have remained relatively static. They went up 0.2 percentage points overall from 15.7% to 15.9%, and they slightly decreased in the Black category by 0.1 percentage points from 3.5% to 3.4%, (Asian representation remained unchanged). 

The reason why news is important when trying to judge the new diversity structure is June Sarpong has made it very clear on several occasions that News and Current affairs does not come under her remit as the Director of Creative Diversity. And so for people working outside of the BBC there has always been the question as to whether BBC news purely sees diversity as an HR workforce issue under Anne Foster, and if so why does the corporation view news differently from the rest of its output?

PROGRESS IN LEADERSHIP POSITIONS GOES UP AND DOWN

Representation in senior leadership positions is a relatively mixed bag. 

Outside of London it went down by over 25%, while in News and Current affairs there were marginal gains - despite the high profile departure of Kamal Ahmed. 

The biggest success story however was in the subdivision of BBC Studios which makes TV and Radio programmes. Ethnic diversity representation in senior leadership rocketed from 7.0% to 10.2%. This is an important and substantial change. The one curious detail about this is the progress was made almost exclusively in the “mixed” category, with asterisks in both the Asian and Black columns as the numbers are too low to report. This means the important progress in this area may do little to dispel the news reports in 2020 of anti-Asian racism at the BBC reported in Eastern Eye and anti-Black racism at the BBC reported in the HuffPost.

SILVERLININGS 

For me the biggest positive from the report is for the first time, for as long as I can remember, the overall retention rate for Black, Asian and minority ethnic people has improved. Non-White workers are no longer disproportionately leaving the corporation compared to their White counterparts.

This is a massive turn around. It has been an open secret for a long time that until the BBC could get a grip on retention issues then other policies to increase ethnic diversity would be the equivalent of pouring more water into a bucket with a hole in it.

However the BBC is not quite out of the woods yet when it comes to addressing its retention issues as Black staff are still more likely to leave than their other colleagues, and workers of colour in general are less likely to receive a redundancy package when they do leave.

NEVER MIND BEHIND THE CAMERA - WHAT ABOUT THE PROGRAMMES?

There is no doubt that there have been some high profile commissions by the BBC in recent months when it comes to ethnic diversity, including the Small Axe series of dramas and I May Destroy You.

However, it would appear that Black Asian and minority ethnic audiences are getting less value for their license fee than their white counterparts. 

A considerably smaller percentage of Black, Asian and minority ethnic households consume BBC TV and Radio each week than White households, 61% versus 78% when it comes to TV viewing, and the numbers for ethnic minority radio listenership are so small that they do not even register. 

What is even more worrying is the non-White households that do watch BBC TV each week watch roughly half the amount as their white counterparts (3hours 57mins a week vs.  8hours 46minutes a week).

The one glimmer of hope is the percentage of Black Asian and minority ethnic households that consume BBC Online is roughly at the same level as white households, 62% and 63% respectively.

CONCLUSION - IS THE NEW DIVERSITY STRUCTURE WORKING?

Under normal circumstances I think one would expect better results after such a radical restructure, accompanied with the high profile public commitments to diversity coming from both the outgoing and incoming Director Generals.

2020 however was far from normal.

Covid-19 has meant that organisations across the world have had to rethink their corporate strategies. 

On the plus side many will view simply standing still during these difficult times as progress.

On the negative side some of positive signs, such as higher retention rates and increased online viewing may also just be a blip due to Covid-19, as people were more concerned about job security. Also the other big news story of 2020 - Black Lives Matter - might have meant a higher consumption of online content for ethnic minorities.

Therefore I think it is still too early to say the new restructure has failed, but I do think the annual report should lead to some serious questions, because in the following year standing still will not be an option. 

Channel 4's Paralympics: On Screen Disability is Great - But Let's Not Forget Disability Behind the Camera

Channel 4 has just announced massive strides in on-screen disability representation in its coverage of the Paralympics. Now it’s time to see similar ambitions for representation behind the camera.

On the 15th of June the Sir Lenny Henry Centre published its recommendations for Channel 4’s Black to Front Day - a day highlighting Black talent both in front of the camera and behind it with the ambition of having long term effects long after the day.

The Centre worked closely with Channel 4 and it was an incredibly constructive and positive experience, with the broadcaster taking on board all of our key recommendations.

Key to our proposals was the idea that representation behind the camera was just as important as representation in front of it. Which is why we said “All new commissions for the day should aim for 100% Black representation behind the camera”. We recognised that this is an aspirational goal, but an important principle, that demonstrates that both sides of the camera matter when it comes to diversity.

You could call this the “Olusoga Principle” and the report directly referenced David Olusoga, writing:

‘It is widely acknowledged that there is enough Black talent to achieve 100% representation in front of the camera. The question is what is the rationale for not aspiring to achieve the same level of representation behind the camera. Indeed, we believe trying to formulate an argument as to why the goals would be different runs the very risk of falling into the issue identified by Dr David Olusoga in his MacTaggart lecture when he said:

“There is willingness to accept Black people as performers, in front of the camera, but unwillingness on the part of the industry to make space for them behind the scenes, in the rooms where the decisions are made and the real creativity happens.”’

It was therefore with both excitement and trepidation that I read the latest news that “More than 70% of the Channel 4 presenting team for the Paralympics will be disabled.”

The obvious concern is when it comes to disability Channel 4 is falling on the wrong side of the ‘Olusoga Principle’.

First of all this is an amazing achievement and should be acknowledged as such. According to the latest UK broadcasters’ backed reporting figures disabled people account for only 8.2% of on screen roles, and so a 70% marks major progress.

However I am concerned that I have not seen any figures published yet relating to representation of disabled staff behind the camera.

Channel 4 obviously recognise the importance of representation behind the camera. In 2020 when the channel published its commitment to disability representation it published targets for both on-screen and behind the camera: 12% for workforce representation by 2023, and 9% for on-screen representation by the same year.

Running through the Centre’s report for the Black to Front Day was the idea that this should be bigger than just one day, and that lessons learnt from the Black to Front Day to increase Black representation should be used, where appropriate, to increase all types of other representation.

Channel 4 achieving more than 70% on-screen representation should be applauded, I just hope that the channel rereads our report and sees transferable lessons, and publishes equally ambitious behind the camera targets.

MENELIK SHABAZZ - A TRUE PIONEER IN BLACK BRITISH FILM 1954 - 2021

We often talk about the “Windrush generation” as paving the way for the modern Black presence in the UK. As important as this generation is I believe there is an equally important generation, and that is the first generation of Black Britons. This is the first generation that was either born in the UK or came over here at such an early age that Britain was the only place they ever really knew as home.

While immigrants invariably fight discrimination and hardship it is often not until the next generation call a place “home”, because they literally have no alternative, that the fight for true equality goes to the next level.

This generation is no longer the Caribbeans with a “grip (suitcase) on top of the cupboard” because they constantly had one eye on going back home.

This is the generation that not only fought to end racism but demanded equality - because if you cannot be equal in your own home, where can you be an equal?

This is the generation that truly started to forge what it meant to be "Black British" as opposed to Caribbean living in the UK.

This is the generation that created the foundations of Black British culture from Lovers Rock in the 1970s, to Soul II Soul in the 1980s.

And this week we lost a giant of this generation who shaped Black British film and culture.

Menelik Shabazz was born in Barbados in 1954 and came to the UK at the age of six. In 1974 he enrolled at the London International Film School, two years before "Pressure", the first film by a Black British director, was released.

He was a pioneer in recognising the importance of the first generation of modern Black Britons who truly called the UK home. In 1976 he directed Step Forward Youth, a 30-minute documentary about London-born Black youths. And in 1978 he directed Breaking Point which tackled the issue of systemic criminalisation of Black British youth and the police use of the “sus law” (a version of today’s “stop and search”).

Shabazz however is probably best known for his first feature-length film “Burning an Illusion” about a Black British woman in London, again focusing on the first generation of Black British people born in the UK. The film won the Grand Prix at the Amiens International Film Festival in France, and in 2011 it was honoured with a Screen Nation Classic Film Award.

The importance of the Black British community ran through his life, and not just his films, as he co-founded Kuumba Productions to provide an outlet for independent film projects in 1982.

In 1984 he went on to co-found Ceddo, a seminal Black British film collective. It was at Ceddo that I had the privilege of first meeting Menelik as I worked as an intern on his docu-drama "Time and Judgement", telling the history of the struggles of the Black community across the world through the use of newsreel footage. I was far from the only young Black person Ceddo gave pivotal training to, and I would not be working in the media industry today without the foundation they provided for me.

In Ceddo Shabazz clearly placed the Black British experience within a global context, as the film collective covered subject matters such as Rastafari women in Jamaica, with the film “Omega Rising", and the struggle against apartheid in “We Are the Elephant”.

Shabazz continued his groundbreaking work of framing Black British film in an international context as he launched the Black Filmmaker Magazine (BFM) in 1998, the first Black film publication aimed at the global Black filmmaking industry.

Menelik Shabbaz was a pioneer who saw the importance in shaping and capturing the narratives of the Black British experience, and was one of the first people to recognise its importance first to Britain and then globally.

He was an inspiration to me and will be sorely missed by every Black British person working in film.

What the Privatisation of Channel 4 Would Mean for Media Diversity

In 2001 President George Bush famously addressed Congress, just ten days after the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers, and said 'You are either with us, or with the terrorists'. It was an oversimplification of geopolitics that with hindsight proved to be incredibly harmful - the consequences of which we are still untangling.

Complexity and difficult political decisions are rarely well served by reducing them to simple binaries.

Similarly when it comes to the UK’s complex media landscape I am tired of simple binaries.

In recent weeks all too often debates around the future of institutions such as the BBC, Channel 4, and even Ofcom, seem to boil down to either “support the status quo” or “support a radical transformation” (with right-wing, free market, political overtones).

Let’s be honest, for almost a decade I have been campaigning to change the status quo, from advocating for ring-fenced funds for diverse productions, to changing the structure of the media regulator Ofcom, to even overhauling the tax system surrounding film and television productions. 

And this is because the piecemeal policies that are all too often rolled out by the media industry have not been good enough. In terms of ethnic diversity there has been no significant progress once you factor in wider demographic changes in the general population.

Disability representation, both in front and behind the camera, still bumps along the bottom.  

Women are still massively underrepresented in key roles such as directing.

And, I haven’t even started to discuss intersectionality. 

There are good reasons why I am no fan of the status quo.

At the same time I recognise that invariably improvements to diversity and inclusion in the media industry have been due to deliberate and better regulation, not less.  The biggest advances in regional diversity for example have  been due to better definitions of “Out of London” imposed on them by the media regulator. And it is no coincidence that arguably the most impactful policy responses to the summer of Black Lives Matter protests came from the two most regulated and publicly accountable broadcasters; BBC and Channel 4.

I see real dangers to media diversity and inclusion if less public money is put into public service broadcasting - here I’m obviously thinking about the BBC. 

And I also see real dangers to media diversity and inclusion if broadcasters are more accountable to shareholders and driven by the profit motive than to creating a public good for the whole nation - here I am obviously thinking about the current privatisation debate swirling around Channel 4.

As a Black man I am all too sensitive of a history in which my community’s support is used to see off the worst excesses of policies that might harm us, but the remaining status quo is not changed as a result to help us either.

In the latest media storm I personally oppose calls for the privatisation of Channel 4 as I worry this will, over time, reduce regulatory oversight, and the channel’s management will be more concerned about increasing returns to shareholders than increasing programming for underserved audiences. But neither do I find common cause with the people opposing privatisation unless they can show me how they will change the status quo and find common cause with people from underrepresented groups to increase representation, diversity, inclusion and equity. 

(This blog post reflects my personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect any organisation I work with)

Lack of Media Diversity is a Market Failure - An Economist's Perspective

          

What is the point of Ofcom?

This is not a rhetorical question but one we should keep at the forefront of our minds when we are discussing diversity in the UK media industry.

First of all, Ofcom is the  “government-approved regulatory and  competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom”. Its’ job is not to try and make people “nicer” or to make sure people are “kinder” to each other. 

It is a market regulator in the same way Ofwat (Water Services Regulation Authority) regulates the water industry or Ofgem (Office of Gas and Electricity Markets) regulates the UK’s gas and electricity networks. Sometimes because television is a creative industry, full of creative artistic people we seem to forget this cold reality. The regulators are there to address market failures which left to their own devices would disadvantage the UK population.

Market not personal failure

This is how we must see the television industry’s lack of diversity. We must see it as a market failure. Too often when we discuss media diversity we frame it in terms of the personal failings of a few executives or commissioners. For example, I frequently hear people saying if we could only increase the diversity of the gatekeepers we could solve diversity. For me this is akin to saying; if we could only get nice liberal people to run our energy companies we would not have to worry about regulating them properly.      

If the lack of diversity is a market failure and Ofcom’s job is to address market failures, then the first thing we need to acknowledge, however hard, is that Ofcom has failed the television industry so far when it comes to diversity. Statistics suggest that diversity in the industry has barely kept pace with the demographic changes of the UK, and in some areas has even gone backwards

Why? And is it really Ofcom’s fault? To understand how Ofcom currently does versus how it should regulate television diversity one means is to examine other  (accepted) market failures in the television industry and how Ofcom addresses these.

Tv is full of market failures-how to solve them.

The television industry is actually full of market failures. For instance, television broadcasters left to their own devices will not produce enough quality news and current affairs programmes, favouring entertainment programmes instead with larger audiences and more revenue.. 

Unregulated, broadcasters will not produce enough high-quality children’s programmes as certain types of advertising targeting them is prohibited and it is a small audience nationally, so it doesn’t make “market” sense to target them. Another example is the production of programmes outside of London     , it often makes “market” sense to have all producers in the same place. 

To solve these types of market failures the regulator has to step in and actually shape the market setting quotas and issuing license requirements. Specifically for all the above examples, Ofcom insists that broadcasters produce a set quota of news and current affairs programmes, Childrens’ programmes and programmes outside of London.

Importantly what Ofcom does not do is insist that producers of Children’s programmes receive more training in the hope that they will be able to compete with cheaper light entertainment programmes. 

Ofcom also does not produce reports on the lack of Out of London     or Childrens’ programmes arguing that “sunlight is the best disinfectant” and more information will help broadcasters realise the error of their ways and commission more programmes.

     

Last but not least, Ofcom does not ask broadcasters to implement “unconscious bias training” for senior managers to commission more Welsh or Scottish programmes - as if somehow the lack of out of London programmes is due to some inbuilt prejudice. 

Will these ‘solutions’ work for OFCOM?

Now I mention all these “solutions” in a slightly tongue-in-cheek manner, but I have a serious point. These are all solutions that I have heard Ofcom as a body, or individual members of Ofcom, support explicitly or implicitly when trying to address television’s lack of diversity.

But they are not the right – nor usual – set of solutions for a regulator to focus on. When it comes to addressing genre and regional diversity the regulator has realised that it needs to focus on the market failures inherent in how the industry operates, not on the individuals working in the market. No number of Ofcom diversity reports or diversity schemes will solve the problem of low numbers of Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME), disabled people and women in the industry.

So why hasn’t this happened so far, specifically for diversity, while it has happened for the other market failures in the industry?

The problem with the lack of diversity market failure is that there is an even bigger market failure that lies behind it, which Ofcom has yet to acknowledge, at least in public as being the core reason for the lack of diversity-that the UK television industry effectively being a “monopsony”.

What is a “monopsony” you ask?

Well, most people have heard of a monopoly – and no I don’t mean the board game! A monopoly – as a concept – is when you have a large number of buyers of a certain product or service but only one seller of the product or service.

The real examples of monopoly that most people come across are railway companies or electricity companies. A few companies can dictate how much people pay for the product, provide a bad service and have other negative effects for the consumer, but still increase their profits. The negatives of monopolies are well-known and governments often have to intervene to try and either break them up or legislate against their worst actions. Indeed, the kinds of regulators I mentioned right at the beginning of this piece – the Ofwats and the Ofgems – are often created to regulate these “monopolistic” industries.

A monopsony has similarly negative consequences but it is like a monopoly in reverse. A monopsony is when you have lots of sellers of a product but only one buyer.

In these circumstances it is the buyers who can dictate the price and how the market works.  It is a classic case of market failure.

And increasingly that is precisely what many economists think we have in the television industry. Strictly speaking it is an oligopsony – as they are just a few buyers in this market, but let’s keep it simple for now.

The fact is, most freelancers and independent companies might not have heard of monopsony theory but whenever I talk to friends in the industry they quickly recognize the situation of competing with hundreds of other companies (sellers) but only having a handful of broadcasters (buyers) they can pitch their ideas to whom to sell their programmes.

Increasingly monopsony theory is being used by economists to explain why diversity problems exists in various industries. It is no coincidence that both the tech and television industries seem to suffer from a lack of diversity and both have the problem of a few large companies dominating their industries.

Economics at bed time?

Now I love economics - I studied economics at university, I am currently a financial journalist, and I am married to one of the leading economists in China Africa relations. Just the other day I was talking to her about Neo-paleo-Keynesian Phillips Curves. And bedroom pillow talk can sometimes stray into subjects such as Friedrich List’s theories on infant industry protection.

But I realise other people might not similarly love the dismal science so here’s the warning; as L’Oreal used to say - concentrate because here comes the science bit:

Monopsony theory goes a long way to explaining the entrenched diversity problems in the UK TV and film industry, such as only 3 percent of people working behind the camera in the film industry being from a BAME background or that number falling to 0.3 percent when it comes to disabled people.

Two sides of the same coin?

While there will always be competition for the very best talent, say the top one percent, the vast majority of us are somewhere in the middle. What monopsony theory tells us is that while the companies might fight over a very few people (actually inflating their wages) there is less competition by companies to battle it out for the other workers. Monopsony theory can explain why broadcasters will fight over the talents of Steve McQueen and Micheala Cole while the rest of the industry can remain remarkably un-diverse.

These two things are not contradictory; they are in fact two sides of the same coin.  The market failures associated with monopsonies mean that companies will more likely hire their friends, promote people that look like them and retain people that they like rather than people who might be the best person for the job. In a free market if you did this you would quickly be punished.

In a monopsony (or oligopsony) you will hardly feel the consequences of your actions - at least in the short to medium-term.

So what does this mean for those of us who want to increase diversity in the film and television industry? Should we all just give up because we are working in a monopsony?

No! We definitely should not give up.

But monopsony theory does teach us that we need to look at different types of solutions as opposed to the usual ones people in the industry often mention. It also teaches us that it is unrealistic to think market participants (the broadcasters) can solve market failures irrespective of their best intentions. It would literally go against all conventional economic theory – and their fundamental interests as ologopsonists (!) - to do so. 

It must be up to the regulator.

Dealing with monopoly – and in this case monopsony is precisely what regulators like Ofcom exist to do. 

Ofcom should not be, and is normally not about trying to get individual people to act better. Yet this is how it has been with regards to diversity so far. 

Ofcom is an industry regulator established to address market failures. 

The lack of diversity is a market failure. As a result, there is only one way the lack of diversity will be solved. Regulation. In this respect, all roads lead to Ofcom, doing what it does for other market failures. I look forward to it taking up this crucial role.

(This piece was originally published in "What's the Point of Ofcom" an anthology of essays on the purpose of the media regulator and its future)    

Israel-Palestine Conflict Highlights Why Diversity at Twitter and Facebook is Critical

Irrespective of your view on the Israel-Palestine conflict currently raging, there are important issues and lessons for diversity on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter beyond the conflict itself.

Social media platforms often seem like neutral spaces. They simply host uploaded content. However, they and the people employed by them, are making editorial decisions constantly. These decisions include, for instance, which hashtags to promote and/or block, which content to promote and/or block, which users should be promoted and/or blocked, and in a broader context what entire issues should be promoted and/or blocked.

The blocking of hashtags recently made international headlines as posts containing the hashtag #AlAqsa or its Arabic counterparts #الاقصى or #الأقصى on Instagram were either taken down or hidden from search results. Facebook, which owns Instagram, said this was a mistake and was due to the Al-Aqsa name being associated with terrorist organizations.

A few days earlier Twitter blamed technical errors for deleting posts and suspending accounts mentioning the possible eviction of Palestinians from the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

And, in what may at first seem to be a completely unrelated issue, last week Facebook announced that it would be removing groups and pages that discourage people from getting vaccinated against Covid-19, regardless of whether the information is true or not.

I highlight these three examples because irrespective of your political views they illustrate that social media platforms are making subjective editorial decisions, not just simply objective decisions ones based on the factual accuracy of the posts. These decisions are either made directly by human moderators or indirectly by algorithms implementing programming by human programmers. The examples of subjective moderation often only draw public attention when "mistakes" are made or they are particularly contentious, but the reality is they are being made every day.

Now once this is recognised, when it comes to diversity and media representation it is important to know the demographics (racial, gender, disability, socio-economic etc) of the people making these decisions.

To put it at its most basic, if editorial decisions are being made about which content or terms are being blocked with regards to the Israel-Palestine conflict it would be useful to know the diversity of the humans either making the decisions directly or programming the algorithms to make those decisions.

And while this is true for media about Israel-Palestine, the arguments are transferable for almost any news story from Black Lives Matter to Brexit.

Unfortunately the social media platforms only give limited diversity information about their workforces. But even the limited information we do know is not encouraging.

For Facebook for example 89% of its US leadership is either White or Asian, and 91% of its US technical staff are either White or Asian. 

Conversely Black people, who make up 13.4% of the US population, and where Facebook's headquarters are based, make up only 3.4% of leadership roles and 1.7% of technical roles.

If one thinks about the Israel-Palestine conflict specifically “Additional [Ethnic] Groups” - which Arab-Americans would come under - make up 0.3% of leadership roles, and 0.2% of technical roles. (There are no separate statistics for Jewish-Americans)

Women are similarly underrepresented globally in leadership and technical roles at Facebook, at 34.2 and 24.1 respectively.

Twitter is marginally better than Facebook when it comes to both gender and Black representation, but both groups are still massively underrepresented in technical and leadership roles. And it does not produce statistics for either its Arab or Jewish workforce in the US.

Both social media platforms recognise they have to do better when it comes to diversity and have set out broad diversity targets.

Importantly, as far as my research goes, I can find no breakdown of the ethnicity or gender for either company - or any social media platform for that matter - for the people making the companies’ editorial decisions. But assuming the editorial diversity is at least partially in line with the companies’ leadership and technical roles diversity, we are left with the impression that important editorial decisions about content, users and globally sensitive stories are being made by an extremely unrepresentative group of people.

I have written copious amounts of articles on how this type of situation adversely affects the editorial decision making of newsrooms and conventional media organisations and all the arguments hold true for newer social media platforms.

It is now more important than ever that the diversity of the teams that are making editorial decisions on social media platforms is revealed. And just as Facebook and Twitter have set broad diversity targets in categories such as “leadership” and “technical”, they now need to set targets for editorial decision making teams.

As one Facebook employee wrote in a memo seen by the New York Times about wrongly blocking posts about the Al Aqsa Mosque; “These mistakes are painful, erode the trust of our community and there is no easy fix for that”. One of the best places to start to rebuilding that trust would be for their diversity to reflect the communities they are trying to serve.